I feel particularly bad for Guild Wars 2 Devs / ArenaNet

[Rukario.1695]

I assume you can understand why at this point, yeah?

• Backlash after the majority of events, time and time again.
• Reveal trailers being scrutinized and any positive feedback is cascaded upon by the loud minority.
• Side-projects cancelled and a large sum of employees either moved or let go.
• As a result of the last point, likely leading to increasingly stressful conditions and a variety of setbacks / communication issues.
• Now releasing a previous expansion for free as long as users purchase the newest, as a means to both boost "fence-sitter" purchases and hook players for longer.

When I take those facts into consideration, I can understand some of the current problems.

• Most exposure is about merch, sales, or BOGO (buy-one-get-one) offers.
• Partnership promotional codes are only distributed to 0.01% of the amount of users who enter.
• New store content is immediately injected into loot-box mechanics which is being outlawed in many areas now.
• The time to develop an expansion would likely be considerably longer, yet this is still something a large majority of users want.
• Due to the aforementioned, opt-in for Season-based releases; content feels short, dry, and outlived by the community.
• Game still lacks proper rework of a newer graphic API which two singular developers of a console emulator can implement in a few months.
• Lack of quality of life UI and function changes which would ease the learning curve for new or returning players, somehow already included in plugins from unrelated Devs.
• Lack of long-standing goals that do not feel like a chore, or short-term goals that feel rewarding.

Players are now concerned about the longstanding longevity of the game they have played for many years, myself included. I've been here since Guild Wars: Factions was released. I built my desktop (which I'm even using now, but with upgrades,) during the premiere release of Guild Wars 2 in August of 2012 specifically for Guild Wars 2. Binged the game for hundreds of hours and enjoyed it thoroughly; so many fresh experiences.

What it boils down to though is that over-hyping content that is already cut and dry will lead to a lot of backlash, especially if they call off of work, fly, or drive to witness it.

I hope ArenaNet's efforts to push Guild Wars 2 forward continues, but I really hope they consider what the problem actually is at this point:

Transparency, frequent communication, and a plan of action need to be available to your players.

Best of luck.

((And, no, I'm not leaving. But my playtime has severely dwindled due to the circumstances.))

PS: Don't turn this into a "hate on Anet" thread, thanks.

[LucianDK.8615]

Well said, this is on par with Blizzard wasting their last Blizzcon on Diablo for mobile.

[vyncius.6105]

they over hyped that, Mike Z was nervous af, cause knew people will be dissapointed

[Tiviana.2650]

I am thinking this is an ncsoft issue, i think they are not giving them what they need to make the game continue . Honestly i think ncsoft wants the game to go so they can make mobile game. You cant be that out of touch with your players, you just cant be. Im sure the devs want to do more create more but the company overlords have final say.

[Wakani.1829]

I for one, just want some proper content.

I get that they're a buissness, and they are in it to make money, but they don't need to put 95% of their content in the cashshop, we need a better ratio, so everything isn't locked away behind a paywall, or as you said, RNG mechanics that are (thankfully) started to get banned in many countries.

GuildWars 1 did amazingly without all this, 7years + and i never ran out of things to do, a month or two in gw2 and you're dry on content, unless you count timegated dailies and what not.

This whole announcement should've happend in a blog post, with a trailer attached. the level of anticipation they created, was, is, and will always be, something gamers connect to MAJOR content drops, or massive overhauls. trying to change our perception of that, NEVER works.

[Substance E.4852]

@Tiviana.2650 said:I am thinking this is an ncsoft issue, i think they are not giving them what they need to make the game continue . Honestly i think ncsoft wants the game to go so they can make mobile game. You cant be that out of touch with your players, you just cant be. Im sure the devs want to do more create more but the company overlords have final say.

Anet was self publishing for at least a full year before NCsoft took back control recently

Don't punt this off onto the people who didn't hinder GW1's success

[Rukario.1695]

@Tiviana.2650 said:I am thinking this is an ncsoft issue, i think they are not giving them what they need to make the game continue . Honestly i think ncsoft wants the game to go so they can make mobile game. You cant be that out of touch with your players, you just cant be. Im sure the devs want to do more create more but the company overlords have final say.

I'm sure there's some truth to this, there always is. I think what we need the most right now is some transparency from the development.

[Tiviana.2650]

@Substance E.4852 said:

@Tiviana.2650 said:I am thinking this is an ncsoft issue, i think they are not giving them what they need to make the game continue . Honestly i think ncsoft wants the game to go so they can make mobile game. You cant be that out of touch with your players, you just cant be. Im sure the devs want to do more create more but the company overlords have final say.

Anet was self publishing for at least a full year before NCsoft took back control recently

Don't punt this off onto the people who didn't hinder GW1's success

The numbers speak for themselves, and the direction ncsoft is taking. Im not blind i have seen this before. Anet was always under company rule since the day ncsoft bought them.

@Rukario.1695 said:

@Tiviana.2650 said:I am thinking this is an ncsoft issue, i think they are not giving them what they need to make the game continue . Honestly i think ncsoft wants the game to go so they can make mobile game. You cant be that out of touch with your players, you just cant be. Im sure the devs want to do more create more but the company overlords have final say.

I'm sure there's some truth to this, there always is. I think what we need the most right now is some transparency from the development.

I wish but it wont happen, look at ncsofts game focus, the odd duck is gw2. I truly believe anet dont have full freedom or resources to develop how they want. The money they make mostly goes to ncsoft.

[JTGuevara.9018]

Edit: Nah, I actually don't. During the layoffs....fine, empathize with them. It sucks to lose your livelihood after so many years, but this fiasco....they did this to themselves. They need to understand, if you want business from players....be honest...deliver what you can. Don't overhype unless you can deliver. Of course, they did not. MMOs can't be sustained by single-player oriented content like living world/gem store forever. Age of Empires 2, a game from freakin 1999, STILL has content being made for it. That's from the RTS genre, which is basically on life-support.

[Substance E.4852]

@Tiviana.2650 said:Anet was always under company rule since the day ncsoft bought them.

Which is literally before GW1 even came out.

NCsoft is a boogieman people invoke to absolve Anet of poor decision making

Guild Wars is not City of Heroes

[Fashion Mage.3712]

@Rukario.1695 said:

@"Tiviana.2650" said:I am thinking this is an ncsoft issue, i think they are not giving them what they need to make the game continue . Honestly i think ncsoft wants the game to go so they can make mobile game. You cant be that out of touch with your players, you just cant be. Im sure the devs want to do more create more but the company overlords have final say.

I'm sure there's some truth to this, there always is. I think what we need the most right now is some transparency from the development.

After that fiasco where ANet was developing two (ultimately cancelled) projects on the side, they likely aren't getting as much support. I don't think transparency will help much since it certainly seems like they don't actually have anything worthwhile to show. "Build templates are happening sometime, and after this episode of LW you can have another episode of LW in like 3 months maybe" isn't an answer I think most people will be happy to hear even though it's likely the reality.

[AlexxxDelta.1806]

They are not making any more expansions so they felt the need to rebrand LS (saga) and present it the way they would an xpac. A pretty standard, if not tired, marketing ploy.

Thing is that no matter how expansion-like the presentation is, it's the content that needs to be up to that standard. And so far the audience seems to have found it lacking.

[Tiviana.2650]

@Substance E.4852 said:

@Tiviana.2650 said:Anet was always under company rule since the day ncsoft bought them.

Which is literally before GW1 even came out.

NCsoft is a boogieman people invoke to absolve Anet of poor decision making

Guild Wars is not City of Heroes

Dont be naive , do you not think they answer to ncsoft? If they are blundering everything ncsoft would step in, this isnt anet so much as the bosses telling them they arent getting money to make anything like expansions or lots of new content. Ncsoft has the last word, they okay or not what anet can do. They push for more shop revenue because they dont care about gw2 only what it can earn them.

You cant take a western game and treat it like a Korean one , and from what everyone is saying on glassdoor that is the problem. That ncsoft is clueless about western mmos

[Julischka Bean.7491]

I feel bad for Anet too. They had a big kurfuffle earlier this year and are trying to rebound from that. The living story looked very interesting and I am very much looking forward to playing it...also praying that I will be crafty and skillful enough able to complete the story solo :)

Anet said the were going to give us info about the new story, and they delivered.

But, like everyone is saying, there was no need to go to pax with this. A simple stream with Ruby and gang would have been very sufficient

Countdown timer, renting this room, people being people thought that despite what Anet said about this being only an intro for the living story, there might be more.

New Elite specs, slurp, everyone wants more of those. New Expansion-yes, please!

WvW and the PVP folks wanted new ways to maul each other.

Raiders, PVP, Fractals, and WvW all wanted Build Templates to aid in mauling both each other and the enemy.

Everyone went into this with hopes...because why all this hoopla for just the living world...there has to more.

There wasn't.

But, they paved the way for more. They made it so if you bought HOT you got POV for free. From this doing, I smell an "expansion about to be born."

Build Templates are coming, lots of things are coming.

Remember, the devs were concentrating on stupid things behind the scenes, I say stupid because NCSoft demanded they stop with the other projects and start paying attention to their main game. They have been playing catch up ever since and trying real hard to please us.

How about we give them a chance????

Grin...that said...if the new living story is too hard to solo, by jingo, I will riot in the streets :)

Lisa.

[EagleDelta.4726]

@Rukario.1695 said:

• Game still lacks proper rework of a newer graphic API which two singular developers of a console emulator can implement in a few months.Only wanted to bring this up as those two developers didn't rework the engine to use a newer graphics API, instead they wrote a translation layer for dx9 -dx12.... very different and has its own host of potential issues. I play the game on Linux using WINE + d9VK a project that does something similar, but instead translates the dx9 calls into Vulkan calls. Does it boost performance? Definitely, but it (like the dx9 -> dx12 proxy) is a hack. To truly rework the engine in DX11, DX12, or Vulkan would require a lot more work than people seem to think.

In fact, DX12 has more in common with Vulkan than DX9/10/11. It was an entire rewrite from the ground up and was borne out of the AMD Mantle project (just like Vulkan was).

[Roquen.5406]

Why do you feel bad for a business? They are here to make money while doing something they are "passionate" about. They do that by providing a product that their customers enjoy. When their customers no longer enjoy said product, they spend less time with the product and in this case eventually leave. It's just business, right? If they choose not to learn from past mistakes and they keep bleeding customers and in turn lose money, that is on them. And I think that's the big issue here, they really don't practice what they preach. They say they listen but the things they keep releasing and "promising" are not what the players, content creators, partners, and the community as a whole...are asking for. For whatever reason it seems that they keep missing the mark.

Now you can say, "well you don't know how difficult it is" or "go develop your own game and then you'll see". But I don't need to know or do either of those things to understand that a product should deliver on what it promises. A job should be done well no matter what it is. I don't need to know how to build a spaceship to understand that a spaceship blowing up in orbit is a bad thing.

The thing that is most frustrating to ME is that people ask the players to be "grateful" for what they get. People too often settle for less. The onus should be on Anet to provide a product that really fires on all cylinders. Remember, if we don't like the game we leave and find one that better suits our needs. But if their game shuts down or ceases to be profitable, they lose their jobs. You can look at the recent lay-offs that happened and yes you can have empathy for them but remember the truth is that the lay-offs happened in large part of Anet's own doing. They released expansions and siphoned off a good portion of their core teams to work on side projects. So you leave a skeleton team to do the work of a much larger team and then you wonder what happened when things blow up in your face? Would you expect any different from your job?

It's fine to branch out and work on new projects, maybe a new IP, maybe GW3, maybe GWMobile or whatever other project(s) they may have been working on. But you shouldn't do so at the expense of your bread and butter. Especially if you are telling everyone it's your passion project, yet you keep neglecting it. It seems to me a lot like mismanagement of their product as a whole and until they fix that or whatever issues keep plaguing them, these things will come up time and time again.

They don't give us episodes for free because they are nice, they do it because it's sustainable for them. A large majority of people wouldn't pay for content every 4 months that provides them with 2 hours of LS and then achievements/a few items to grind for. But they will keep coming back to game that they can drop in and out of casually. Anet knows this and so their money comes from initial Box Sales + the Cash Shop. If they knew they could charge for each episode and retain their player-base, they would.

I had no expectations for this announcement because of Anet's track record but for whatever reason they decided to hype up an event as if some big new news was coming. But then they announced something that the players have already known, along with some other vague things, and merchandise. Of course the player-base is going to be frustrated.

If Anet needed to do this for their for their morale, then fine, that's great. But don't say this was what the players have been asking for because if that's what they truly believe, then they haven't actually been listening.

[Rukario.1695]

@EagleDelta.4726 said:

@Rukario.1695 said:

• Game still lacks proper rework of a newer graphic API which two singular developers of a console emulator can implement in a few months.Only wanted to bring this up as those two developers didn't rework the engine to use a newer graphics API, instead they wrote a translation layer for dx9 -dx12.... very different and has its own host of potential issues. I play the game on Linux using WINE + d9VK a project that does something similar, but instead translates the dx9 calls into Vulkan calls. Does it boost performance? Definitely, but it (like the dx9 -> dx12 proxy) is a hack. To truly rework the engine in DX11, DX12, or Vulkan would require a lot more work than people seem to think.

In fact, DX12 has more in common with Vulkan than DX9/10/11

. It was an entire rewrite from the ground up and was borne out of the AMD Mantle project (just like Vulkan was).

You're talking about something else. I wasn't referencing an API wrapper.

[Iozeph.5617]

They decided to hype this for over a month. Even going so far as to set a day long countdown timer on every page of their site and across social media. They might not have wielded this particular sword of Damocles but they certainly built it.

[Hashberry.4510]

Its no fun working at a company that has lost its way. It sure feels like they are stumbling along; that can't be good for their people, customers, or shareholders.

[shadowpass.4236]

Sorry but Anet is mistaken if they think players will continue to play the game without any meaningful content updates.

It's been two years since PoF came out and PvP and WvW have had NOTHING new to work with. Now, I can't speak for PvE, but it sounds like Raids/FotM have also been largely ignored.

Out of most of the hardcore PvPers I know, all of them thought today's announcement was a complete let-down and discords are currently being blown up with pictures of people uninstalling, bandwagons to different games, and expressions of disappointment and lack of motivation to continue playing GW2.

• For PvP, we've received two new 2v2 maps with no ques behind them and no additional support. What are we supposed to do with them? Que custom arenas for the next 2 years? Play the same Conquest mode we've been playing since release, with the exact same specs we've been playing for the past 2 years?
• For WvW, they've been playing the same gamemode since release. Nothing new there and I doubt world restructuring is going to do much to bring people back/encourage them to stay.
• For PvE, I hear a lot of the hardcore raiders/FotM players are also unhappy with the lack of new content.

So what does that leave? Oh, the people who play for two hours every week, finish the content in a month, and move on to a different game until 12 months later when another Living World season comes out. Like, there are so many people who play games to compete or PvP who literally couldn't care less to mind-numbingly drag themselves through slow-paced (in comparison to PvP) story missions they care nothing about. All of the PvPers I know just torture themselves for the new skins or mount but they always, always complain about the process and how painstaking it is to be forced to play a gamemode they don't want to play for a reward that has been inconsiderately locked behind same same type of content over and over again.

I started playing GW1 when I was 8 years old and GW2 when I was 12. I'm 20 now and, as much as I love this game, I just don't see a reason to continue playing. Currently, I only log on if a good friend of mine wants to play with me and it shouldn't be like that.

[SnowMochi.7602]

No more grinding. Grinding is NOT content.Keeping promises is a virtue, not a sin or a weakness.Keeping promises builds and keeps trust.

[Cyninja.2954]

I am currently happy with the game, even if it is getting stale slowly and my biggest fear would be that my social groups slowly lose interest and leave. Which would make enjoying the game a lot harder or I just might take a break again for a while then.

I was not going in with high expectations (or any at all) but this event was poorly developed. Even the pacing was completely incorrect. You do not end on the low beats like merchandise and things people do not care about. You end on a high note. At the very least the entire presentation should have been the other way around. Start with the useless merch stuff, then end on the story and content beats which players care about.

There was literally nothing new mentioned which was not already known. I don't care if the Living World content is called Saga or Season and I doubt many others do. As is, this entire presentation could have been a Guild Wars twitch stream or blog post. Making a huge fuss and then not delivering substantial new information is weak, especially with the competition drawing players like crazy. Those WoW Classic numbers are high, but they will drop within a few weeks/months. You need to make sure players come to THIS game and not Final Fantasy 14 or ESO.

This presentation was the possibility to break the slump in the community which has been ever present since last year. First the lay-offs earlier this year (which honestly affected the developers the hardest no doubt, but also caused for concern in the community), then the constantly unfullfilled expectation for content and direction clarity with the release of Season 4 Episode 5, then 6 (which was a very nice event finale mind you and combined with some of the other mini content was raising hopes), then the live event. Every single time players are strung along hoping for a life sign and strong signal which states: guys we are here and we are fine. Every single time it's basically a whimper of: yes, we are sort of still making content and you are safe for the next 6 to maybe 12 months. That's simply not enough for a MMORPG.

[Magnus Godrik.5841]

I dont feel bad for them at all. The problem with the big event was that it basically told us what we already get and been told. Thier hype machine needs fixin. If you want hype, show off the world boss drakkar. Show me the build template UI. Show me a fractal boss. Show me where the next raid will be. I like hearing whats going on but i also want to see the progress. Anet is talented and hasnt disappointed me in a way i would quit. But thier hypemachine needs some serious work.

[whoeverxwins.1279]

@Tiviana.2650 said:

@Substance E.4852 said:

@Tiviana.2650 said:Anet was always under company rule since the day ncsoft bought them.

Which is literally before GW1 even came out.

NCsoft is a boogieman people invoke to absolve Anet of poor decision making

Guild Wars is not City of Heroes

Dont be naive , do you not think they answer to ncsoft? If they are blundering everything ncsoft would step in, this isnt anet so much as the bosses telling them they arent getting money to make anything like expansions or lots of new content. Ncsoft has the last word, they okay or not what anet can do. They push for more shop revenue because they dont care about gw2 only what it can earn them.

You cant take a western game and treat it like a Korean one , and from what everyone is saying on glassdoor that is the problem. That ncsoft is clueless about western mmos

When I first looked into GW2, I was hesitant, having just come from another NCSoft game (Aion). At the time (right when HoT released) it seemed ArenaNet was still pretty much in control. Now, it looks like NCSoft is putting on more pressure, unfortunately. Things like desirable skins being obtainable in loot boxes only are a definite NCSoft type strategy. They start basing armor upgrades on RNG (improvable by buying gem store items), I'm outta here.

[TexZero.7910]

I was raised on a policy of your reap what you sow.So while you can feel sorry for the devs and i can get behind that, i cannot feel sorry for ANet as a whole.

Even more so after the announcement. It showcased the worst side of ANet, the inability to learn from their previous failure. Instead they turned to marketing and asked them how to reframe it. So now we have Saga's instead of Story and yet nothing changed. Even the Dev on stage wanted to try and say they have 4 teams now, as if to say they didn't have 4 teams back when Mike O'Brien had to apologize to the community 2 years ago.